Into the Void
by Fierceawakening
Summary: What really happened during the moments in The Transformers: the Movie when Starscream abandons Megatron. T for some violence, references to sexual situations, character death, and general sadness.


"I still function!" rasped Megatron.

Starscream looked down at the battered, heavy frame in his arms. He could barely hold it, his arms inching lower even as he stared.

He couldn't believe his optics, couldn't believe the deep gouges in his leader's frame, energon and hydraulic fluid weeping from most of them. Even Megatron's face was pitted with wounds, gears grinding as his mouth struggled to form the words.

But the Decepticon leader's optics were bright, as bright as he'd ever seen them, as though lit with the energy of Megatron's spark itself. If Starscream was right, that spark would soon gutter out without the medics' attention. But the Constructicons were gathered around the doorway, watching, expecting Starscream to throw Megatron into space. They'd never fix him now.

Starscream's spark contracted with fear. Rumor had it that when your spark was bound to someone else's, it hurt more when they died than when you died yourself.

He'd never admit to having bonded with Megatron that way, and he doubted either of them could pinpoint the moment that their sparks had entwined.

But he'd loved every pain that Megatron had given him, and that had to mean something.

He'd confessed it, over and over, once Megatron had dented and torn and broken him, had ripped through his plating and his excuses and the doors that kept him locked and cold. He'd said it, had howled it, had screeched it out so loudly he was sure someone else had heard it:_ Yours. Yours. Yours._

He could take every pain. He could fold himself up after every indignity, close himself like he closed his chest plates after Megatron took him, after he'd screamed his despair and welcome and need. He could laugh and smile, his wings clicking as he shifted his face into its dark smirk, and say it over and over again: _Not yours forever. You'll see. You'll see._

But he knew, with a certainty that froze his hydraulics, that the pain that was coming wouldn't be a pain he could change.

Or even one he could endure.

The others were watching him. His wings quivered as his arms sagged again. They were waiting for him to decide what to do. Megatron was dying. Hell, Megatron could barely even speak.

That meant he was their leader now.

Because Megatron had lost his fight. Megatron, who'd promised to lead them all to conquest and glory.

The only mech alive who'd been strong enough to lead them. Now he was weak, a mangled mess of parts that Starscream held in his hands.

_How could you be so weak?_ Starscream thought, his spark whirling white-hot, crackling with such rage he feared it might melt the casing that housed it. _How could you be so pathetic? How could you abandon us?_

_How could you abandon me?_

His frame trembled with the effort it took to choke back the cry he felt building inside of him, a howl of rage and grief that would have to come out sometime but that he could never let the other Decepticons - _his Decepticons,_ now, and hadn't he always said it would happen, just like this, and wasn't Megatron exactly what Starscream had always said he would be, a broken old fool who turned out to be worthless in the end, and _why was it all so wrong_, and _oh Primus, it wasn't supposed to hurt like this -_

"Oh, how it pains me to do this," he said, his voice laced with sarcasm, his mouth upturned in a smirk.

None of them knew it wasn't a lie. None of them would. None of them had ever heard Starscream tell the truth before.

Except for the one he was letting go, the one who was floating into the black, his ruined vocalizer grating out Starscream's name.

###

The pain still hadn't come.

That frightened Starscream the most. He dreamed of Megatron often. Happy dreams, most of them, dreams that ended with Megatron chuckling in triumph as Starscream overloaded.

It stung to wake on an empty berth and know that Megatron was never coming. But that spark-deep pain, that tearing at the center of him, that desperate agony even he couldn't transmute - that never came.

Today, Starscream had an easy way to keep himself from wondering why. He threw the cape around his shoulders and preened, watching his own image reflected in the walls. He'd had them replaced, of course, and he saw himself in all of them, the cape glittering, catching the light and sending it dancing. He spun, whirling in the center of the room, a nexus of shimmering light.

Megatron would call it excessive. Tawdry. Frivolous. Ridiculous.

And Megatron would be even more irritated if he ever saw the crown today's ceremony would place on the new leader's head. Jewels winked from its golden prongs. Everything about it gleamed.

Well, Megatron wasn't here to mock Starscream now. The Seeker smiled at one of his many reflections and tried to pretend the room wasn't too quiet.

###

Starscream's spark pulsed with recognition even before he saw the purple blur of the craft flying in. It wheeled in anticipation even before the stranger leapt out of it.

The craft transformed. Starscream paid no attention to the mech it had become. He stared only at the one standing in front of him. That one was unfamiliar: purple and broad, with a three-pronged crown on his head and an orange gun on one arm.

And there was something odd about his energy signature. A coldness, a frozen crackle, as though he'd been touched by the hand of some titan, or maybe by the hand of death itself, and come out the other side.

He frowned at Starscream, his red optics gleaming. Starscream shivered.

"Who disrupts my coronation?" the Seeker shrieked, half in indignation and half in wonder, as his rogue spark pulsed hard in his chest again.

"Coronation, Starscream?" asked the newcomer. His voice was unfamiliar, too. Starscream was sure he'd never heard it before.

And yet -

Starscream's spark danced crazily in his chest as he looked again at the orange cannon atop the other mech's arm.

_It can't be,_ the Seeker thought, his wings clicking frantically. _It doesn't even look like -_

"This is bad comedy," the other finished.

"Meg - Megatron?" Starscream stammered, even as his spark surged with acknowledgment he could no longer reason away. "Is - is that you?"

"Here's a hint," the other snarled, transforming. Starscream heard a familiar whine as the cannon powered up and the other shifted form, his frame becoming a tripod of purple legs supporting the orange barrel and a base holding it steadily aimed at Starscream.

Starscream felt no fear, only a terrible and vast relief. He'd never felt Megatron die because he_ hadn't_, because he had only _changed_ somehow instead, changed and come back to claim what was his.

And that, Starscream understood.

Megatron rarely shot him. Only when Starscream had done something particularly egregious, some wild act of reckless insubordination, would the purple heat of the cannon's fire ever sear him.

And when it did, it never hit his spark. Sometimes it rent a wing, leaving a great smoking circle that poured energon and oil and blackening whatever remained of the now-useless appendage.

It hurt. Like hell. Like losing a part of himself.

But it was proof of Megatron's rule. Nothing more, and nothing less.

Starscream faced this new Megatron without flinching. Now everything would go back to the way it was before.

Now everything would be all right.

_Yours,_ he thought with a choked sob.

Then the energy consumed him, setting his sensor net ablaze, his spark flaring in time with the lavender light as it overcame him.

"You're - not Megatron," he wailed through the pain.

Then he fell apart, the bright orb that had filled his chest blazing above the blackened rubble, then dimming and fading away.


End file.
